Sweet and Savory Gifts from the Kitchen!

♪ Make yourself at home ♪ ♪ Enjoy the time we share ♪ ♪ With a dash of this, and a pinch of that ♪ ♪ Mixed all up with care ♪ ♪ The best company and conversation ♪ ♪ Recipes and neat creations ♪ ♪ We’re cooking up something good ♪ ♪ Here “At Home” ♪ ♪ We are cooking up something good ♪ ♪ Here “At Home” ♪

• Hello and welcome to “At Home.” Today, we hope that you are really getting prepared. You know, we don’t have much time left. We have a lot of gifts to get together, to buy, to make, whatever, to wrap. Hope the trimmings on the tree are already in place. Hope that most of your gift-giving is, has at least been thought out. Today, we’re gonna give you some suggestions because we’re doing all gifts from the kitchen. But first I want to show you, these are gifts from McGinnis Sisters who are so wonderful about supplying all the products that we use to do these programs. And so they have a wonderful department that does all kinds of baskets, any kind of a gift that you like, they will package for you. And this is great. This is just a sampling. I’m gonna try my best to show you. Look at this one. This is for the Italian lover. There is Italian toast in there. There’s all kind of cookies, rosemary basil bread mix. There’s a dressing. There’s sauces. There’s olive oil. I mean, everything you could want for a wonderful Italian dinner. These are all available at McGinnis Sisters. And look at this one. If you have a dog that has absolutely everything, this is for your puppy. Your puppy, in this particular one, has a bag of, you can get this close, Jim. Muddy Paws Popcorn. That’s for your dog. That is not for you, my dear. Please do not eat. Humans should not consume. Okay? But this is cute. And also, in that particular one is a little bag of a gourmet doggy cookies. I tell you, in some of these other, this one is gorgeous. I can’t even pick it up. Maybe we could get a shot. This is a sleigh. And it is full of gourmet, everything. I mean, just popcorns, and I mean, just full of all kinds of goodies. Some of the things like chai spice tea honey, okay. Little packs of coffee, cappuccino, cinnamon and vanilla nut cappuccino. And I have one faster, chai, Chocolate Chime chai tea. If you’ve never tried chai tea, you gotta get some, it’s excellent. And then this is a thing. It always appears at Christmas. It’s called Christmas stollen. Very heavy, traditional German sweet bread. Like, it’s excellent. Always there. Here we’ve got the biscottis. I mean, McGinnis Sisters really outdo themselves. Excellent, excellent choice. All kind of flavor. Look at this, this is a different kinds of teas in teabags, apricot, all different kinds. Really, really nice ideas. I would suggest if you have time, if you have time, if you don’t know what to buy, go to McGinnis and they will help you. They’ll be more than happy to help you put a really nice gift selection together, okay? Well, today, gifts from the kitchen. Get your paper and pencil ready, and we’ll be right back after the hint to get started with gift from the heart. Here’s today’s “At Home” hint. “When working with cookie dough, always keep the dough that you are not working with covered with plastic wrap to keep it moist until you are ready to use it.” If you’ve got a helpful hint you’d like to share with us, we want to hear from you. Send your hint to At Home Hints, Cornerstone TeleVision, Wall, Pennsylvania 15148-1499. Well, we’re back in the kitchen, and we’re making gifts from the kitchen. Now, there’s gonna be three different ones today. And there’s a wide variety that you could go, but we just thought these would just stir up maybe your creativity. The first one is marinaded provolone cheese chunks. Look at that. Makes a quart. Look at all the seasonings. There’s some fresh thyme in there. And I’m gonna show you, ’cause this is incredible. This would be great to give as a gift. And what you do is serve that with your salad, serve it as an hors d’oeuvre, appetizer with some wonderful, like bruschetta, some, you know, like little toast or whatever. Simple and easy to do. First of all, you have a pound, which is here, of provolone. You could use mozzarella, too, cheese, cutting cubes about yo big, all right? I’m gonna put that in our bowl. And what you need, this is unusual, besides ingredients, are containers to put them in. This will make about a quart. This is one recipe. But if you want to make them in, here’s two, you could do two of these. These decorator ones with this little pressure, and you have to use the gasket, you know. Those are nice to give as gifts too. So you might want to be scouting around for some really nice containers to do this in. But we have our cheese. Now we’re gonna do, I’m going to use this spoon. Now, this is three cloves of garlic that is minced. That’s gonna give an awesome flavor. 1 1/2 teaspoons of red chili peppers. Ha! Okay? Some oregano. Let’s see, let’s make sure. One teaspoon of oregano. And you know when I’m looking for gifts from the heart, I just, I look for things that, like, I have a friend and I know she loves cheese. So why wouldn’t I make this for her? It’s simple, just assembling. It’s not hard to do at all. Okay, one and a, I’m sorry. Paprika. 1/4 teaspoon. We’re just gonna do it like this, 1/4 of a teaspoon. Okay? Now, we need parsley flakes. This is 1 1/2 teaspoons of parsley flakes. So there’s one and 1/2. Okay. We have the garlic. We have that. And this is our thyme. Now this is fresh. But if you have to use dried time, that’s okay. Believe it or not, this is still growing in my garden. And this is great. If you ever get a plant of this, just keep it. It grows year after year. I’m gonna do that last. And what you want to do is use a very light extra-virgin olive oil to mix this. But before I do that, let me mix these ingredients so they don’t all stick together. ‘Cause when the oil gets on it, guess what? You got it. They all stick together. Now we’re gonna do the oil. And this is, can you imagine if you have this oil? Once you eat the cheese out of it, you don’t throw the oil away. You keep that oil and you fry with that. Can you imagine the flavor that’s in that oil? Once the cheese is gone and all this other, awesome. Okay, so now we mix it together. Make sure that that garlic gets mixed in. Now I have to tell you what you do with this. You put it in your containers. I think I’ll do this one first. You put it in your containers, and you leave it sit out for five days on the counter. All right? Now, if you have one of those canning cups, you know, that sits inside the top of, that would be the thing to do that’s open, because it’s running down the side, but it will be all right. And you let it sit out for five days. Every day, you want to shake the jar. All right? And you want to be sure that this oil covers well. And after the five days, then you refrigerate it. It’s important to do that. This look great? Ah! Yummy, yummy, yummy, yummy. Get my cloth here. Now, I think anybody that loves cheese would be absolutely wild to have this. Now, you’re gonna take your thyme, like, not your real time, but the thyme. And you’re gonna stick a sprig of that in there. And I like to take a knife. And if you’ll just take that knife and go down the side, that thyme will get submerged in there, like so. And then you’re gonna put, you don’t have to process or anything. You’re just gonna put the lid, a fresh, clean, new lid in ring. And there you have your marinated cheese chunks. Ah, This is so good. Five days, let it sit out. Each day you do this, because that’s gonna blend the flavors, okay? On the fifth day after you’ve done that, put in the refrigerator, and it will keep until you’re ready to use it. Ah! Awesome. I know a few people that are gonna get that for Christmas. Okay? All right, now let’s move along. The second one I want to show you is something that’s so unbelievable, nobody believes it, because it’s so simple. You know those chocolate turtles with the pecan legs and they have caramel in the middle? And then there’s chocolate all over the outside. We’re making those. You take one can of Eagle Brand milk. That’s not evaporated, no other kind of milk but Eagle Brand. And that looks like this. You take the label off the can. You have no paper, nothing on this. You put it into your spaghetti cooker pot. Don’t open it. Just put the whole can into the pot. Fill it with water this much above the can. So you want this much water in that pan. Turn it on and have it start to boil. You’re gonna boil this, keeping the water level above the can for two hours, two hours. At the end of the two hours, you bring it out, and you let it sit on, on your counter somewhere to cool off. When, at the end of the two hours, then you’re gonna open it. And you know what? Look at that caramel that’s coming out of that can. When you get done at two hours, you have homemade caramel, caramel sauce, caramel that’s the middle of a turtle. Awesome. Unbelievable. You will not believe how delicious. A lot of people here have been trying it today. We’ve had nobody disappointed. Okay? Let me get this. Now, here’s the way you assemble. You’re gonna take, you have to buy the whole pecans for this, and you’re gonna line them up one, two, three. Three like that, in a kind of a triangular setting. One, two, and three. Now, if you’ve got families that really like turtles a lot, are big eaters, you can make whoppers. I mean, make them as big as you want. These turtles could have five legs if you wanted them to. And nobody says they can only have three. Fact, whoever saw three-legged turtle? I’m not sure. Okay, four legs. Yeah, okay. All right, Mike, this one’s for you. It’s got four legs.
• [Mike] All right.
• Now, what we do now is take, let’s see, I don’t want to use the same one I had spices. Here we go. You’re gonna take a spoonful, and I would use the 1/2 teaspoon full. And you’re just gonna go into that caramel. Now this is still a little bit warm. Look how the consistency of that. Isn’t that awesome? And all you do is just spoon the caramel right on top of the three nuts. That sounds so funny. Yeah, the three nuts. Okay. And then you’re gonna have what we use here is just the chocolates. And I have to tell you that these chocolates and some of the gift items that you’re gonna see at the end of the show, the packaging, was given to us by K&B Cake and Candy Supplies. They have a great variety there. Anything you need to make homemade cakes and candies. Trust me when I tell you, that’s the place to go. And the number’s on the screen there, and they can help you. But all you do then is just take your, and you’re gonna melt this over hot water, not boiling. Okay? And all you do then is just spoon, spoon, spoon the chocolate. You can take it out as far as you want on the nuts. They can cover completely. But you want to make sure you’re doing it on a wax paper. You don’t want to put this in the refrigerator. This will set right up. There’ll be no problem. Again, if you want more chocolate, just start at the top and let it pour just a little bit like that. Let me make another one for you. You take your caramel. Now, let me tell you that this caramel, you can use this for sauce for ice cream, any left over. Why not? It’s delicious. Warm it up in the microwave. Okay, now we’re spooning the chocolate, again, right over. While I continue to get my turtles ready, I want you to take this break. And when we come back, more gifts from the kitchen. We’ll see in just a minute. I’m showing you my turtles. Look how nice that is. Five turtles nestled in a little box like that, would be really appreciated. Put a little green on top with some berries and holly. And then when you give this as a gift, look how nice the box would be. Isn’t it pretty? Put a little gold band on there, a little piece of ribbon, whatever. This is a great gift. And what did it cost? A few pecans, some chocolate, and a can of sweetened, condensed milk. You say, Arlene, how many do you get? You get a lot. I’m telling you probably get three, four dozen of turtles. Again, it depends on how big or how small they are. Let me show you one more time. We have our four pecans there. Now I’m gonna put a little bit more in the middle of this one, ’cause this is what holds the pecans together, you see? You know how sticky caramel is. Well, that’s a good thing in this because it holds the nuts in place. And if you see that one isn’t quite in place, just push it in there. There you go. Now all you do, again, I’m gonna take this over here so we can do it better. You’re going to spoon your chocolate. And again, it has to be over waxed paper, because when the chocolate sets up, it will stick to whatever surface, okay? Now, if after these other two set up, you think, “I like to have a bit more chocolate,” dip another, put another spoonful of chocolate and will not hurt it at all. Okay? I hope you make it. Everybody that has tasted that, these are about $15 a pound, 10 to $15 a pound in the store, they tell me. I haven’t bought any, so I couldn’t really tell you, but why not try to make them? And you know, again, it’s a gift from the heart. Okay, the next one is something I really like, ’cause I really like macaroons. And if you’ve ever made them, sometimes they just don’t work out right. Let’s talk ingredients, fresh, fresh eggs. The egg whites are what we’re gonna use. You need fresh coconut. Don’t go and buy coconut that has been laying on the shelf for a year. You don’t want that. It should be moist. It should stick together. See this is sticking together? And you can see the moistness on my fingers. You know this is fresh. If you have some in your refrigerator that’s been sitting there since last Christmas, you don’t want to do it. Because why invest the time and effort if you don’t use the very best when it comes to ingredients? Well, there’s not many ingredients in this one. We have 3/4 cup of white sugar. And we have 1/2 cup, and you have to measure this because this could be four or five or six eggs, depending on the size of egg that you use, measure exactly 1/2 cup. Keep putting them until you get a 1/2 cup. You get too much, take a little bit out. We’re gonna put that in with the sugar, just like so. All right. And now we need 12 ounces of shredded, not the real flake thin. We like the longer stringer, shredded ones. This is seven ounces per bag. So we’re gonna do almost two full bags. We’ll hold a little bit down here at the bottom and say that’s gonna be our two ounces, okay? All right, there we go. That basically, that’s all the ingredients there are to this. And what we’re gonna do, this has to be mixed thoroughly. And you’re gonna, just keep moving it around. The egg white is what brings it all together and what holds it together. You don’t beat them up. You don’t do any, but you can see where the egg white is and where it’s not. Where it’s real pure white, you know that it’s very dry and it’s, if you tried to make them without mixing it well, it would not work, all right? So you keep turning it around, mixing, mixing, like so. Now I would suggest if you’ve not invested in parchment paper, it’s in all the supermarkets now, you can get anywhere, you can go to houseware stores, and everybody’s got it, because it’s really come into its own. It’s excellent. And when you do cookies, stuff doesn’t stick to the pan. And the cleanup is so wonderful. You don’t have to spend all, you know, get them the burned pieces of cookie off the pan. So, buy the parchment paper, comes in a roll. This is just kind of like the wax paper and the foil. And you want to cut a piece that is as big as your pan. Okay, you tear it off, and we’re gonna put this, and I turn it around like that. I didn’t get it quite big enough, did I? Oh, maybe this is better. Okay, and you make sure that it stays in your pan well. Now, these, the best thing for me, I’m almost there with the mixture here, best thing for me to do is use my trusty scoop. This is like a, I think it’s about a one ounce, because this will make nice, big ones. And all you do is you try to pack it in, take all the excess off the edge, and then you just drop it. Okay? This is gonna make a couple of dozen. They make big, beautiful cookies, big, beautiful macaroons. This is like a Mounds bar. I mean, this is so good. And these are a treat. These are just something. You don’t have to worry about them spreading ’cause they won’t, but you just pack it in there, just like so. And then you put it right on your, if you have family that likes coconut, they’ll go wild for these. And these in a little gift box, oh, what a wonderful gift. Especially if you know somebody that’s really wild about coconut and it happens to be one of your favorite things, this would be a treat for anybody. These are gonna go into a preheated 350 degree oven, and they only bake about 12 to 15 minutes. They’re not gonna get real brown, but they’re gonna start, they’ll get like snow peaks on top, you know, with a little bit of brown on the top. And that’s when you know that they’ll be ready because they just start to brown. You don’t want these to get brown ’cause they’ll burn. And what we’ve done with ours, then when they cooled, we dip them in some melted chocolate, just the bottoms. Well, we’ll be back to show you everything we’ve made today and a whole lot more in just a minute. Stay with us. We’ll be right back. Well, I hope we’ve stimulated your creativity today, thinking about gifts that you can make for people that you love, something different, something that puts a part of your heart into every gift. And you can see, we have quite an array. This is just, you know, it really wasn’t that hard. It wasn’t difficult. You saw what I did. There was no great complicated set of instructions. And I tell you, probably, everybody’s oohing and ahing. This cheese is something. Look at this cheese. And what you want to do is be sure, these little stickers are available at K&B, like I said. You put a little sticker on here that says, “Please keep refrigerated.” That’s important. So that the person that receives it knows what to do with this because it’s not canned. It’s just been prepared and placed in a nice jar. Make them all different sizes. Here we have our macaroons that we’ve prepared. Beautiful. See how they’re just slightly browned on top? That’s what you want. You can dip the bottoms of them into melted chocolate if you desire that, that will work beautifully. And next to it, here’s the turtles. Oh, boy, you have to try this. You just have to, and along with that, you can package them, again, in little bags like this. If you want to tuck this into a little, some kind of a basket that you’re giving with different kinds of foods, these are wonderful. These bags, all this kind of thing is available at K&B like I’ve told you. It gives you joy. When you have spent a day preparing things like this knowing that you have made gifts for somebody that you care about, you know, God gave his greatest gift to the world when he gave Jesus. So God’s a giver, that’s his nature. And we as his children, that’s our nature. So we love to give. And when you can give gifts like this that people will really, really enjoy, at the end of the day of preparation, you feel so satisfied. You feel like, “Wow, God, you bless the work of my hands. And you’ve helped me to prepare things that people enjoy and will know that I really truly care about them because I’ve spent the time doing it.” I hope that you will try the recipes. I hope you send for the recipes. And just give it some thought this time. Don’t run to the mall and spend all that money, stay in the kitchen and prepare some really great gifts. Thank you for joining us today. We, until the next time, we say, “Be sure to join us because it just wouldn’t be the same without you.” We’ll see you then.
• [Announcer] Food provided by McGinnis Sisters Special Food Stores in Brentwood and Monroeville. Taste the world.
• [Announcer] Cornerstone TeleVision wishes to thank all our faithful viewers whose consistent prayers and financial support have made this program possible.